#but is that true? can we really be sure? isn't there a world in which juliet just says 'hey dad i love romeo and want to marry him instead'

[s-lorelei]

Men killing themselves has nothing to do with religion. It has to do with the fact that men don't know how to communicate with other men or have normal friendships with people, mainly women. And when they're rejected they decide that the entire world hates them because they just can't grasp the reason why they were rejected. Not to mention, we're forcing men to conform to absurd societal norms that absolutely do not work now, such as being "breadwinners." Men shouldn't need to work 3 jobs or an 80 - 100 hour work week to get by. And if he's married, then his wife should be working too, especially if they have kids. Your own ideologies are killing men. You think that men have to be manly and masculine and insensitive and sturdy and whatever the hell else you think makes a man a man, but that isn't true.

And your claim that "men usually hire a maid or get another family member to take care of *his* kid because he just doesn’t have time." I believe you’re the one who's wrong here. What if he doesn't have a family member to hand his kid off to? What if he doesn't have the money to hire a maid. Not everyone has money and lives in California or New York or literally any big city and can just "hire a nanny." A good single dad who works away from home usually sends his kid to daycare (if there's no family involved), which is far less expensive than hiring a maid, which, like I said, is not something a normal person has the luxury of doing so idk what planet you're on. I also cannot believe you said caring for a child is low-effort, now I really want to know what planet you're actually from.

To address your family dynamics: my father is a single dad to my two half sisters and he's constantly chasing a woman around because he can't do anything on his own. He pulled my sisters out of school because he was too lazy to get them up in the morning and complained when they brought him homework. He "homeschooled" them because he wanted an excuse to not be responsible for them.

90% of all the men I know are lazy ass bums who need a woman to wipe their asses for them. My father, the first time I had actually met him when I was 15 and my grandma was sick with covid, asked me as soon as I stepped in the doorway, "do you cook and clean?" He was speaking to his fucking daughter (that he had denied for years) like this. I had just been passed around from house to house by CPS, I could barely stand up because I was so exhausted, and this douchebag excuse of a man had the audacity to ask the daughter he barely knew if she would cook and clean for him, just because I was a girl. That's shameful.

It also sounds to me like you're only speaking about America. You surely didn't mention all of the child and sex trafficking in India and Nepal when you said, "some animals think rape is okay, but humans don't." Have you ever seen literally any middle eastern country? Marital rape doesn't exist in places like that. Men think, "well, we're married so it isn't rape." And you’re actually condoning this by saying that we, as humans, don't think rape is okay. Men do. Not every man since there are 8 billion people on this planet, but plenty of Arab men do and that's disgusting enough knowing that just one person thinks rape is okay. And where there is one, there are plenty more.

You should read a book called "Sold" by Patricia McCormick. It depicts a young Nepali girl who is immediately sold into the sex-slave trade by her step-father just because she started her menstrual cycle. He sold her for a little under 10usd.

Men are the reason behind acts such as this, and they wonder why women hate them.

(As pertaining to your mention of dolphins being patriarchal, I don't know if you meant that they're a mixed hierarchy or that they're purely patriarchal. Just saying that dolphins are a predominantly matriarchal society.)

Now, lastly, the Viking bit — the knowledge we have about Vikings and their raids is little to none. Of course the eyewitness accounts would speak of them like brutal monsters and savages. White men spoke the same about Native Americans, did that mean they were all rapists and murderers? Nope. It's the same with Vikings. We do, however, have proof of women who were given a warrior's burial. These women were Shieldmaidens, and they weren't a myth or an old wives' tale. Viking women in the 800s - 1000s had more equality and rights than women do now. But yes, please do try to argue against it.

Things women created and discovered!

All men

Francium (elemental)

Torpedoe radio guidance/navigation systems

Dishwasher

GPS

Wi-fi

Structure of the Milky Way

Kevlar

The Earth's inner core

Aciclovir - an antiviral drug used for the treatment of herpes simplex virus infections, chickenpox, and shingles

Azathioprine - an Immunosuppressive drug used in rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, and in kidney transplants to prevent rejection

Flossie Wong-Staal was the first scientist to clone HIV and map its genes.

Pyrimethamine was initially developed by Nobel Prize winning scientist Gertrude Elion as a treatment for malaria.

Disposable diapers

Child carriers

Vaccine for whooping cough

The galaxy rotation problem - important to the discovery of dark matter

Radio astronomy - Type I and Type III solar radio bursts

That stars are primarily composed of hydrogen and helium

The new outer arm of the Milky Way - In 2004, astrophysicist and radio astronomer Naomi McClure-Griffiths identified a new spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy

Radiation

Radon (elemental)

Kinetic energy

Heavy elements in cosmic radiation

Beta particles are electrons

Nuclear shell

Astatine (elemental)

Nuclear fission - helped in the creation of nuclear weapons

Rhenium (elemental)

Seaborgium (elemental)

Polonium and radium (elemental)

Scotchgard

Structure of vitamin B12

Carbon Dioxide

Bioorthogonal chemistry - the concept of the bioorthogonal reaction has enabled the study of biomolecules such as glycans, proteins, and lipids.

Central heating

Square-bottomed paper bag

Correction fluid (white-out)

House solar heating

Wrinkle-free fiber

Windshield wipers

Car heater

Airplane mufflers

Underwater telescopes for warships

Written computer program

Written (programming) language

Chocolate chip cookies

Pizza saver

Mint chocolate chip ice cream

DNA structure

Sex chromosomes

Lactic acid cycle

Transporsable elements

Gap genes

Myers - Briggs Type Indicator

[samsayswhatever]

On Saxloch and Consent

A continued response to this anon inbox message.

The Threesome has made a lot of viewers question Saxon's consent.

But there isn't ANY explicit verbal consent from ANY of them, and they are ALL drunk and high. So due to the inebriation, I think none of them could technically consent, but that doesn't mean there is a perpetrator.

However, I think Chloe is slightly more responsible since she bought the drugs and discussed wanting a foursome many scenes earlier. She was the one who wouldn't take no for an answer when Saxon denied the drugs, and she is the one who started the "do it!" chant until he took the drugs. But Saxon wasn't very drunk at that point, and Chloe doesn't have much power over him. He could have said no to the drugs.

Despite not knowing if there was initial consent, I actually think there are a lot of signs of possible continued consent between them throughout the night: The high five, the third kiss, locking eyes with Loch as he cums etc. I agree that Saxon's initial enthusiastic consent isn't shown, so there is no way to know for sure what happened off screen, as you said anon.

However, Saxon also previously discussed wanting Loch to fuck Chloe, and his position of power as an older brother is still in play. I agree with you anon that Lochlan has the least power in the situation as a new adult and an underage drinker. But again, as I mentioned in the post linked above, the "happy = villian" theme pops up again because he's so smiley as he jacks him off, and that messes with peoples initial interpretations of Loch's innocence.

Anon, the way I see it is the show isn't completely disinterested in the concept of consent. The conversation about consent between Belinda and Pornchai was wonderfully refreshing. She was talking openly about consent at stages far removed from the act of sex, like it should be in real life!

However, for this threesome, I think the writers purposely left out the explicit consent. If there was a moment in their memories where they both said, "I really want to fuck you," I think it would have been unrealistic because they aren't at the point where they can verbalize their desires. This isn't to say that they DIDN'T say exactly that, but to say that it wasn't a part their memories focused on. All of the scenes shown were the ones that ran through their heads when they were remembering the night for the first time. And since both of them are freaking out about whether they actually sexually desire their brother, I think they are still in denial about their consent, and therefore actively blocking out and ignoring memories that would reveal the true level of their desire.

The "You guys forced me" is an interesting line that relates to this. I don't think Saxon blames Loch at all, but I can see why he blames Chloe and Chelsea in that convo. He starts to blame the threesome on Chelsea for not sleeping with him, which is stupid, but he's lashing out at everyone to avoid the blame himself. He's freaking out because he knows what he did was wrong, and want's it to be someone else's fault so he doesn't have to confront his true desires. But, as Chloe said, she didn't make Loch do anything. Yeah, she may have pushed the drugs on Saxon, but as Chelsea said, "there's no drug in the world that would make me get with my brother."

The "you guys forced me" is another example of how Saxon avoids "i" statements when he's lying. Like when he says, "We both blacked out" instead of "I blacked out." He wants it to be true so bad, but even he doesn't believe it enough to identify with the lie. So after Chloe and Chelsea gave such strong statements, he has no one else but to blame but himself.

--

I think the show is interested in exploring this more, but I'm also afraid that it won't be enough to change the "Lochlan is evil" mindset some people have adopted. I think the next episode will focus on both of them confronting that they did did something wrong.

Lochlan will likely blame himself because Saxon ignored him, and he'll spiral in the monastery about messing up his relationship with his brother, but I don't think he's going to admit it to piper. He might think telling her means he will lose her too.

Saxon will likely progress in the stages of grief, and dance between anger, bargaining, and depression. He'll possibly do something stupid or reckless to distract himself from his thoughts because he has been taught that even saying the word "genitals" is bad. So the weight of what he's done is going to be so much worse.

[pibsboots]

I've always had chronic fatigue. I remember being twelve, and an adult mentioned how I couldn't possibly know how tired they felt because adulthood brought levels of exhaustion I couldn't imagine. I thought about that for days in fear, because I couldn't remember the last time I didn't feel tired.

Eventually I came to terms with the fact that I was just tired, and I couldn't do as many things as everyone else. People called me lazy, and I knew that wasn't true, but there's only so many times you can say "I'm tired" before people think it's an excuse. I don't blame them. When a teenager does 20 hours of extracurriculars every week and only says "I'm too tired" when you ask them to do the dishes, it's natural to think it's an excuse. At some point, I started to think the same thing.

It didn't matter that I could barely sit up. It was probably all in my head, and if I really wanted to, I could do it.

When I learned the name for it, chronic fatigue, I thought wow, people that have that must be miserable, because I am always tired and I cannot imagine what it would feel like if it were worse.

Spoiler alert, if you've been tired for a decade, it's probably chronic fatigue.

Once I figured that out though, I thought of my energy as the same as everyone else's, just smaller in quantity. And that might be true for some people, but I've figured out recently that it absolutely isn't true for me.

I used to be like wow I have so much energy today I can do this whole list for sure! And then I'd do the dishes and have to lay down for 2 hours. Then I'd think I must gave misjudged that, I didn't have as much energy as I thought.

But the thing is - I did have enough energy for more tasks, I just didn't go about them properly.

With chronic fatigue, your maximum energy is obviously much smaller than the average person's. Doing the dishes for you might use up the same percentage of energy that it takes to do all the daily chores for someone else.

If someone without chronic fatigue was to do all the daily chores, they would take breaks. Because otherwise, they're sprinting a marathon for no reason and it would take way more energy than necessary. We have to do the same.

Put the cups in the dishwasher, take a break. Put the bowls in, take a break. So on and so forth. This may mean taking breaks every 2-5 minutes but afterwards, you get to not feel like you've run a marathon while carrying 4 people on your back.

Today, I had a moderate amount of energy. Under my old system of go till you drop, I probably could have done most of the dishes and wiped off the counter and then been dead to the world for the rest of the day.

Under the new system, I scooped litter boxes, cleaned out the fridge, took the trash out, cleaned the stove, and wiped off the counter and did all the dishes. And after all that, I still had it in me to make a simple dinner, unload the dishwasher, and tidy the kitchen.

It was complete and utter insanity. Just because I sat down whenever I felt myself getting more tired than I already was.

All this to say, take fucking breaks. It's time to unlearn the ceaseless productivity bullshit that capitalism has shoved down our throats. Its actively counterproductive. Just sit down. Drink some water. Rest your body when it needs to rest.

There will still be days where there is nothing to do but rest, and days where half a load of dishes is absolutely the most I can do. But this method has really helped me minimize those, which is so incredibly relieving.

[demilypyro]

So I reread Gwenpool Strikes Back and I think I actually like her "616 mutant origin" more now than I did before. Because I didn't fully get what they were doing before.

The inciting incident that starts the miniseries is Gwenpool discovering a new ability. It isn't very well explained in the moment, but it boils down to this: she can imagine things happening before or in-between the panels of the story, and if she then "flashes back" to them in her thoughts, they will retroactively become real events that really happened.

The best way to explain this is using the battle royale she organizes in issue 3: she imagines having set this up off-screen, and it became retroactively true. She initially didn't have a prize in mind, but just has to imagine that Tony Stark donated a bunch of money to be a cash prize, and suddenly it's like that happened. It became true retroactively. She seems to be able to just decide things happened off-screen, and the universe will agree.

As far as abilities go, this is absolutely King Crimson levels of convoluted, and this definitely makes Gwenpool a ridiculously powerful character, but for the purpose of the story, sure, let's say she can do that now.

Now, as we all know, at the end of the miniseries, Gwenpool has a conversation with Ms. Marvel. Kamala doesn't believe Gwen's claims that the Marvel universe is a comic book, and suggests an alternate theory: she may actually just be a mutant with amnesia.

We the audience know this is not true, and so does Gwen. She IS from the real world, and Kamala simply can't comprehend Gwen's perspective on her universe.

But what matters here is that while listening to Kamala's theory, Gwen imagined it. While unintentional, she used her power. She had a "flashback." Which made it real. Retroactively real.

Entirely by accident, there are now two truths:

Gwenpool is from the real world, and is a normal person

Gwenpool is from the Marvel universe, and is a mutant

Though this wasn't Gwen's intention, these statements are now both equally, irreversibly true, and always have been. And so, the Krakoan gate opens. The universe now considers her a mutant.

It's not just that she was accepting Kamala's version of events. She WASN'T a mutant. But now she is. Her powers changed the past. She accidentally retconned herself into being a mutant. Gwen and the audience both know that her 616 mutant origin didn't really happen, but as far as the universe is concerned, it did. Her power made it true.

I feel like they could have done a better job explaining this, but they probably didn't have all the pages in the world to spend on exposition. Either way, I like GSB more now that I properly understand what they were going for.

[cakemoney]

i don't want to die on any hills but i sometimes feel like I'm the only person who read the last scene of romeo and juliet

paris stands between romeo and juliet's tomb. he is not part of the audience; he has no idea juliet and romeo had secretly fallen in love and gotten married; he is not privy to the plot of the story. all he knows is that tensions between capulets and montagues are at an all-time high, and now a banished criminal is breaking into the capulet mausoleum. he does what anyone with the information that he has would think is honorable. romeo approaches, rambles at him unhinged and doesn't explain anything, and calls him a boy; a youth, the same way everyone else talks about romeo throughout the play. in fact, he does it again after he's killed him and come closer to see who it is:

this isn't meant to be a defense of paris, really; i think paris's character very much varies based on how his lines are performed, and depending on the production he could be anywhere between outright sleazy to obliviously presumptuous. it's certainly true that many of his lines are possessive of juliet, and that he is incredibly pushy about pursuing marriage, but no, he is not way older and definitely an adult. and i think that detail matters, because i think the real thesis of the play is unveiled when we reach the end and check the tally and realize that all five people who died—mercutio, tybalt, paris, romeo, and at last juliet—were all explicitly or implicitly referred to as young at some point.*

i see the point in the original post! the enforcing of patriarchy is absolutely a part of romeo and juliet, but it's woven into the greater premise; the social order and power that maintains the rivalry between the two houses is the same social order and power that disregards the opinions and agency of all the women in the play, starting from the very beginning when both ladies capulet and montague fail to deescalate the brawl. montague doesn't show up again until the end, but we see a lot of capulet, arguably responsible for setting most of the wheels in motion. in act 1 scene 2, he's in a good mood; he says outright that it's time to put the rivalry to rest, and tells paris that if he wants to marry juliet, "my will to her consent is but a part", that it matters whether or not juliet likes him. it's clear in his initial resistance to the marriage that he cares for her. but then tragedy strikes, he's reeling and upset, and though he was hesitant, he decides that the best course of action is for juliet to marry paris; and, having decided that, he flies off the handle when juliet disagrees. he had promised juliet to someone, so if juliet doesn't follow through, it will reflect poorly on him, and that's the last thing that he needs right now. his behavior is inconsistent; sometimes he's jovial and chill, but sometimes he's overtaken with fury and lashes out at people he has power over. his wife, just as before, is powerless and falls in line quickly; the nurse attempts to defend juliet, but once they are alone, she counsels juliet to accept her father's decision as the best outcome she can hope for. they live in a patriarchal society, and in this specific society, the patriarchy manifests in the form of a rivalry based on nothing but pride.

the patriarchs themselves are fully grown adults. they know that the rivalry is frivolous and perhaps even in bad faith. capulet is able to threaten violence (over some random servants crossing paths on a public street?) during the day and then dismiss romeo montague crashing a party in his house as not a big deal that very night (tybalt tells capulet about romeo's presence, and capulet tells tybalt to take no note of it). montague's first lines on first appearance are "let me at him!!!" but then once the crowd has dispersed, he has to ask benvolio what happened and who even started it; he was starting a fight for no reason, and he knows that. but the young men in the play have grown up in the shadow of this nebulous hatred; they take it seriously, because they don't know any better, because they don't have the life experience and context to understand that they shouldn't. they take their cues from the leaders of their society—men who, instead of controlling their anger, blow up at random things and then call it honor. in act 1 scene 1, the first time tybalt picks a fight, he's saying dramatic shit like "turn thee, benvolio, look upon thy death"; more grandstanding than combat. he brandishes his sword because it's what his uncle capulet does, so it's the honorable thing to do, so he tries to do it again at the party that night and is so confused when his uncle berates him and calls him a "saucy boy". he's belittled and dismissed, and he doesn't understand why, so in act 3 scene 1, desperate to prove himself, he's now talking completely differently. he ignores benvolio who he had claimed to hate, does not rise to mercutio's taunts and even says "peace be with you"; he states his challenge to romeo plainly, uses formal language and frames it as defending the honor of his house, and does not even draw his sword until mercutio did it first.

romeo is repeatedly described as sensitive and well-mannered by other characters; he tries to keep his cool, keep the peace, he resists tybalt's challenge. but then tragedy strikes; his love is no match for the expectations of hatred and violence that surround them. o sweet juliet, thy beauty hath made me effeminate, he says, and kills tybalt, because that is what masculine honor demands. he's devastated, grieving, angry for how unfairly tybalt had targeted him, horrified at what he's done, terrified of what this means for his future and the life he had wanted with juliet, and he doesn't know how to process any of this except as hatred, for others and for himself; he spends the rest of the story desperate to die, threatening to kill himself when his execution is converted to banishment, because violence, as always, is the only honorable path open to him. his love for juliet was the only thing that stopped him, and then again his love isn't enough, because juliet is dead. in the last scene of the play, in a graveyard, paris calls romeo a villain and challenges him, exactly the way tybalt did, and romeo sees him for what he is: just another boy playing at being a man, in a neverending cycle. do not urge me to fury, he says. i'm a man, i've killed before, and i cannot control what i will do.

that's what the play is about. if you raise your children in a hateful environment, they will destroy themselves. the future of the noble houses, even the prince's, is ruined, because this society is unsustainable, because the men (the boys) that it creates don't know how to function as adults; they don't know how to mediate and resolve conflicts and compromise, they don't know how to express emotion and assert their personhood except through violence, and even when there is no longer anyone around to inflict violence upon, they turn it upon themselves. when the carnage is discovered in the morning, both capulet and montague vow to personally make amends, because both of them know intimately that the tragic, wild, seemingly unpredictable actions of these children were their fault.

*mercutio is the only one for whom i can't recall any lines regarding age. his behavior and friendship with romeo seem to indicate that they are peers, but mercutio and benvolio also have the air of older guy friends (boyfriends?) who are dragging their depressed younger cousin with them on outings because romeo's mom asked them to cheer him up. relatedly, i think there is a viable interpretation (although i'm not married to it) that when mercutio is killed and curses both houses, it's because he's flabbergasted that his goading on of tybalt and romeo's fight led to real consequences. like "wtf, did you just kill me for real, i thought we were playing around"

It’s always so funny to me when people push the “Romeo was grooming Juliet” theory, especially when Paris is right there.

Romeo is around Juliet’s age and we can tell by his lines that Paris is way older and definitely an adult. Like. Look at R + J’s banter, it’s two total equals having fun with each other. They kiss and then Juliet asks for another kiss!! They match each other’s weird vibe!! Romeo says shit like “I wish I was your pet bird” and Juliet responds that she would literally crush it to death because she’d love it too much. Weirdos!!! They match each other’s freak!!!

Compare that with how Juliet interacts with Paris. He’s predatory and possessive over her, and it’s pretty obvious she’s uncomfortable. He pushes her dad to let him marry her even though he knows she’s too young!! Instead of playful banter we get Juliet being quiet and subdued, the complete opposite of her fiery, weird self she is with Romeo!!

“Oh, Juliet should’ve just married Romeo” No! If she did she would have ended up just like her mother, forced to marry an adult man and have a baby way too young, rendering her unable to connect with her child, and then the cycle would continue!

The theme of men preying on young girls and the patriarchy leading to destruction is there!! But Romeo is not the problem!!! He’s actually the opposite of the problem !!!!

[nerdvi]

In the wake of the whole james somerton fiasco and inspired by this post, I wanted to share a few of my um, soft signs, like, orange flags to detect when someone is bullshitting you.

First of all, I am on the spectrum which means 1) I tend to take what people say at face value and 2) I have a strong sense of justice which makes me prone to biases, all of which combined means I am at perpetual risk of swallowing the bullshit.

So, what to do about it? You turn on the critical thinking and pay attention.

As one of my favorite youtubers, Hannah Alonzo, likes to say: "consider the source, remember the motive". Who is talking to you?? What do you know about them?? What biases might they have?? How do they interact with your own biases?? Where are they talking from?? Is it anger?? happinness? boredom?? Also, why are they talking to you? Are they trying to sell you something?? Are they trying to convince you and why?? How do they go about the finantial motivation, if present? If you have, in this case, a white cis gay man talking to you as it he has it the worst of the worst in the world, there's probably some exaggeration and you should start to wonder. There's a good chance he's bullshitting you.

How they talk about women and POC No, no, stay with me. There's a rule I had back when I was dating men: Always beware of how they treat their mother. With the exception of extremes like mama's boys and cases of abuse, how a man treats the woman with whom they have that familial bond is a good indicator of how they are going to treat you. Do they berate her? speak ill of her? are aggressive or controlling? do they dismiss her opinions? Same with creators, and by god I tell you, specially cis male creators, queer or otherwise, always always beware of how they speak of women, how they treat women, how they treat POC. Somerton had a weird vendetta against straight women. It went mostly unnoticed. Then, he was dismissive towards lesbians and other queer women and it was once again overlooked. Then he went ahead and made sinophobic content about genres and cultures he knows NOTHING about. Again, it went unchecked. What I am telling you is IT'S NOT NORMAL. Contempt about women and non white-western cultures is not normal and if someone has them as them as an enemy or a scapegoat, they're probably bullshitting you. Take what they say and fact check it, see for yourself.

If at any point in a video or an essay you find yourself thinking "wait, really??" then it's time to fact check. Is it a bit suspicious?? is your logic telling you that's not quite how this works?? Then take to google, my friend, they might be bullshitting you. At worst, you dodge a fake fact, at best, you learn way too much about a topic you were already interested in.

Beware of the lack of nuance. I can not stress this enough. We all love monochrome, but life and societal issues are never black and white. It's just impossible, there's too many factors to consider. If you are being presented situations or anecdotes as absolute truths, you're probably being bullshitted. If it's too good to be true, it is. If it sounds waaay too convenient, it probably is. A good researcher, a serious investigator, will always have some nuance because they have done the work and checked the sources. If someone provides you 1) no nuance and 2) no sources, THEY'RE BULLSHITTING YOU.

These are the ones I can come up with just of the top of my head, I'm sure there's more and please, add them. Remember that naivité isn't a crime, I'm fairly naive and that's made me distrustful, and these are some of the techniques I've found that help me navigate through a world of information without losing myself.

[cuddlytogas]

So I accidentally almost got into an argument on Twitter, and now I'm thinking about bad historical costuming tropes. Specifically, Action Hero Leather Pants.

See, I was light-heartedly pointing out the inaccuracies of the costumes in Black Sails, and someone came out of the woodwork to defend the show. The misunderstanding was that they thought I was dismissing the show just for its costumes, which I wasn't - I was simply pointing out that it can't entirely care about material history (meaning specifically physical objects/culture) if it treats its clothes like that.

But this person was slightly offended on behalf of their show - especially, quote, "And from a fan of OFMD, no less!" Which got me thinking - it's true! I can abide a lot more historical costuming inaccuracy from Our Flag than I can Black Sails or Vikings. And I don't think it's just because one has my blorbos in it. But really, when it comes down to it...

What is the difference between this and this?

Here's the thing. Leather pants in period dramas isn't new. You've got your Vikings, Tudors, Outlander, Pirates of the Caribbean, Once Upon a Time, Will, The Musketeers, even Shakespeare in Love - they love to shove people in leather and call it a day. But where does this come from?

Obviously we have the modern connotations. Modern leather clothes developed in a few subcultures: cowboys drew on Native American clothing. (Allegedly. This is a little beyond my purview, I haven't seen any solid evidence, and it sounds like the kind of fact that people repeat a lot but is based on an assumption. I wouldn't know, though.) Leather was used in some WWI and II uniforms.

But the big boom came in the mid-C20th in motorcycle, punk/goth, and gay subcultures, all intertwined with each other and the above. Motorcyclists wear leather as practical protective gear, and it gets picked up by rock and punk artists as a symbol of counterculture, and transferred to movie designs. It gets wrapped up in gay and kink communities, with even more countercultural and taboo meanings. By the late C20th, leather has entered mainstream fashion, but it still carries those references to goths, punks, BDSM, and motorbike gangs, to James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Mick Jagger. This is whence we get our Spikes and Dave Listers in 1980s/90s media, bad boys and working-class punks.

And some of the above "historical" design choices clearly build on these meanings. William Shakespeare is dressed in a black leather doublet to evoke the swaggering bad boy artist heartthrob, probably down on his luck. So is Kit Marlowe.

But the associations get a little fuzzier after that. Hook, with his eyeliner and jewellery, sure. King Henry, yeah, I see it. It's hideously ahistorical, but sure. But what about Jamie and Will and Ragnar, in their browns and shabby, battle-ready chic? Well, here we get the other strain of Bad Period Drama Leather.

See, designers like to point to history, but it's just not true. Leather armour, especially in the western/European world, is very, very rare, and not just because it decays faster than metal. (Yes, even in ancient Greece/Rome, despite many articles claiming that as the start of the leather armour trend!) It simply wasn't used a lot, because it's frankly useless at defending the body compared to metal. Leather was used as a backing for some splint armour pieces, and for belts, sheathes, and buckles, but it simply wasn't worn like the costumes above. It's heavy, uncomfortable, and hard to repair - it's simply not practical for a garment when you have perfectly comfortable, insulating, and widely available linen, wool, and cotton!

As far as I can see, the real influence on leather in period dramas is fantasy. Fantasy media has proliferated the idea of leather armour as the lightweight choice for rangers, elves, and rogues, a natural, quiet, flexible material, less flashy or restrictive than metal. And it is cheaper for a costume department to make, and easier for an actor to wear on set. It's in Dungeons and Dragons and Lord of the Rings, King Arthur, Runescape, and World of Warcraft.

And I think this is how we get to characters like Ragnar and Vane. This idea of leather as practical gear and light armour, it's fantasy, but it has this lineage, behind which sits cowboy chaps and bomber/flight jackets. It's usually brown compared to the punk bad boy's black, less shiny, and more often piecemeal or decorated. In fact, there's a great distinction between the two Period Leather Modes within the same piece of media: Robin Hood (2006)! Compare the brooding, fascist-coded villain Guy of Gisborne with the shabby, bow-wielding, forest-dwelling Robin:

So, back to the original question: What's the difference between Charles Vane in Black Sails, and Edward Teach in Our Flag Means Death?

Simply put, it's intention. There is nothing intentional about Vane's leather in Black Sails. It's not the only leather in the show, and it only says what all shabby period leather says, relying on the same tropes as fantasy armour: he's a bad boy and a fighter in workaday leather, poor, flexible, and practical. None of these connotations are based in reality or history, and they've been done countless times before. It's boring design, neither historically accurate nor particularly creative, but much the same as all the other shabby chic fighters on our screens. He has a broad lineage in Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean and such, but that's it.

In Our Flag, however, the lineage is much, much more intentional. Ed is a direct homage to Mad Max, the costuming in which is both practical (Max is an ex-cop and road warrior), and draws on punk and kink designs to evoke a counterculture gone mad to the point of social breakdown, exploiting the thrill of the taboo to frighten and titillate the audience.

In particular, Ed is styled after Max in the second movie, having lost his family, been badly injured, and watched the world turn into an apocalypse. He's a broken man, withdrawn, violent, and deliberately cutting himself off from others to avoid getting hurt again. The plot of Mad Max 2 is him learning to open up and help others, making himself vulnerable to more loss, but more human in the process.

This ties directly into the themes of Our Flag - it's a deliberate intertext. Ed's emotional journey is also one from isolation and pain to vulnerability, community, and love. Mad Max (intentionally and unintentionally) explores themes of masculinity, violence, and power, while Max has become simplified in the popular imagination as a stoic, badass action hero rather than the more complex character he is, struggling with loss and humanity. Similarly, Our Flag explores masculinity, both textually (Stede is trying to build a less abusive pirate culture) and metatextually (the show champions complex, banal, and tender masculinities, especially when we're used to only seeing pirates in either gritty action movies or childish comedies).

Our Flag also draws on the specific countercultures of motorcycles, rockers, and gay/BDSM culture in its design and themes. Naturally, in such a queer show, one can't help but make the connection between leather pirates and leather daddies, and the design certainly nods at this, with its vests and studs. I always think about this guy, with his flat cap so reminiscient of gay leather fashions.

More overtly, though, Blackbeard and his crew are styled as both violent gangsters and countercultural rockstars. They rove the seas like a bikie gang, free and violent, and are seen as icons, bad boys and celebrities. Other pirates revere Blackbeard and wish they could be on his crew, while civilians are awed by his reputation, desperate for juicy, gory details.

This isn't all of why I like the costuming in Our Flag Means Death (especially season 1). Stede's outfits are by no means accurate, but they're a lot more accurate than most pirate media, and they're bright and colourful, with accurate and delightful silks, lace, velvets, and brocades, and lovely, puffy skirts on his jackets. Many of the Revenge crew wear recognisable sailor's trousers, and practical but bright, varied gear that easily conveys personality and flair. There is a surprising dedication to little details, like changing Ed's trousers to fall-fronts for a historical feel, Izzy's puffy sleeves, the handmade fringe on Lucius's red jacket, or the increasing absurdity of navy uniform cuffs between Nigel and Chauncey.

A really big one is the fact that they don't shy away from historical footwear! In almost every example above, we see the period drama's obsession with putting men in skinny jeans and bucket-top boots, but not only does Stede wear his little red-heeled shoes with stockings, but most of his crew, and the ordinary people of Barbados, wear low boots or pumps, and even rough, masculine characters like Pete wear knee breeches and bright colours. It's inaccurate, but at least it's a new kind of inaccuracy, that builds much more on actual historical fashions, and eschews the shortcuts of other, grittier period dramas in favour of colour and personality.

But also. At least it fucking says something with its leather.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The cod-Marxism of personalized pricing

Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.

The social function of the economics profession is to explain, over and over again, that your boss is actually right and that you don't really want the things you want, and you're secretly happy to be abused by the system. If that wasn't true, why would your "choose" commercial surveillance, abusive workplaces and other depredations?

In other words, economics is the "look what you made me do" stick that capitalism uses to beat us with. We wouldn't spy on you, rip you off or steal your wages if you didn't choose to use the internet, shop with monopolists, or work for a shitty giant company. The technical name for this ideology is "public choice theory":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

Of all the terrible things that economists say we all secretly love, one of the worst is "price discrimination." This is the idea that different customers get charged different amounts based on the merchant's estimation of their ability to pay. Economists insist that this is "efficient" and makes us all better off. After all, the marginal cost of filling the last empty seat on the plane is negligible, so why not sell that seat for peanuts to a flier who doesn't mind the uncertainty of knowing whether they'll get a seat at all? That way, the airline gets extra profits, and they split those profits with their customers by lowering prices for everyone. What's not to like?

Plenty, as it turns out. With only four giant airlines who've carved up the country so they rarely compete on most routes, why would an airline use their extra profits to lower prices, rather than, say, increasing their dividends and executive bonuses?

For decades, the airline industry was the standard-bearer for price discrimination. It was basically impossible to know how much a plane ticket would cost before booking it. But even so, airlines were stuck with comparatively crude heuristics to adjust their prices, like raising the price of a ticket that didn't include a Saturday stay, on the assumption that this was a business flyer whose employer was footing the bill:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/07/drip-drip-drip/#drip-off

With digitization and mass commercial surveillance, we've gone from pricing based on context (e.g. are you buying your ticket well in advance, or at the last minute?) to pricing based on spying. Digital back-ends allow vendors to ingest massive troves of commercial surveillance data from the unregulated data-broker industry to calculate how desperate you are, and how much money you have. Then, digital front-ends – like websites and apps – allow vendors to adjust prices in realtime based on that data, repricing goods for every buyer.

As digital front-ends move into the real world (say, with digital e-ink shelf-tags in grocery stores), vendors can use surveillance data to reprice goods for ever-larger groups of customers and types of merchandise. Grocers with e-ink shelf tags reprice their goods thousands of times, every day:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/26/glitchbread/#electronic-shelf-tags

Here's where an economist will tell you that actually, your boss is right. Many groceries are perishable, after all, and e-ink shelf tags allow grocers to reprice their goods every minute or two, so yesterday's lettuce can be discounted every fifteen minutes through the day. Some customers will happily accept a lettuce that's a little gross and liztruss if it means a discount. Those customers get a discount, the lettuce isn't thrown out at the end of the day, and everyone wins, right?

Well, sure, if. If the grocer isn't part of a heavily consolidated industry where competition is a distant memory and where grocers routinely collude to fix prices. If the grocer doesn't have to worry about competitors, why would they use e-ink tags to lower prices, rather than to gouge on prices when demand surges, or based on time of day (e.g. making frozen pizzas 10% more expensive from 6-8PM)?

And unfortunately, groceries are one of the most consolidated sectors in the modern world. What's more, grocers keep getting busted for colluding to fix prices and rip off shoppers:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/loblaw-bread-price-settlement-1.7274820

Surveillance pricing is especially pernicious when it comes to apps, which allow vendors to reprice goods based not just on commercially available data, but also on data collected by your pocket distraction rectangle, which you carry everywhere, do everything with, and make privy to all your secrets. Worse, since apps are a closed platform, app makers can invoke IP law to criminalize anyone who reverse-engineers them to figure out how they're ripping you off. Removing the encryption from an app is a potential felony punishable by a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine (an app is just a web-page skinned in enough IP to make it a crime to install a privacy blocker on it):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/15/private-law/#thirty-percent-vig

Large vendors love to sell you shit via their apps. With an app, a merchant can undetectably change its prices every few seconds, based on its estimation of your desperation. Uber pioneered this when they tweaked the app to raise the price of a taxi journey for customers whose batteries were almost dead. Today, everyone's getting in on the act. McDonald's has invested in a company called Plexure that pitches merchants on the use case of raising the cost of your normal breakfast burrito by a dollar on the day you get paid:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/05/your-price-named/#privacy-first-again

Surveillance pricing isn't just a matter of ripping off customers, it's also a way to rip off workers. Gig work platforms use surveillance pricing to titrate their wage offers based on data they buy from data brokers and scoop up with their apps. Veena Dubal calls this "algorithmic wage discrimination":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

Take nurses: increasingly, American hospitals are firing their waged nurses and replacing them with gig nurses who are booked in via an app. There's plenty of ways that these apps abuse nurses, but the most ghastly is in how they price nurses' wages. These apps buy nurses' financial data from data-brokers so they can offer lower wages to nurses with lots of credit card debt, on the grounds that crushing debt makes nurses desperate enough to accept a lower wage:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/18/loose-flapping-ends/#luigi-has-a-point

This week, the excellent Lately podcast has an episode on price discrimination, in which cohost Vass Bednar valiantly tries to give economists their due by presenting the strongest possible case for charging different prices to different customers:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/podcasts/lately/article-the-end-of-the-fixed-price/

Bednar really tries, but – as she later agrees – this just isn't a very good argument. In fact, the only way charging different prices to different customers – or offering different wages to different workers – makes sense is if you're living in a socialist utopia.

After all, a core tenet of Marxism is "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." In a just society, people who need more get more, and people who have less, pay less:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_ability,_to_each_according_to_his_needs

Price discrimination, then, is a Bizarro-world flavor of cod-Marxism. Rather than having a democratically accountable state that sets wages and prices based on need and ability, price discrimination gives this authority to large firms with pricing power, no regulatory constraints, and unlimited access to surveillance data. You couldn't ask for a neater example of the maxim that "What matters isn't what technology does. What matters is who it does it for; and who it does it to."

Neoclassical economists say that all of this can be taken care of by the self-correcting nature of markets. Just give consumers and workers "perfect information" about all the offers being made for their labor or their business, and things will sort themselves out. In the idealized models of perfectly spherical cows of uniform density moving about on a frictionless surface, this does work out very well:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/03/all-models-are-wrong/#some-are-useful

But while large companies can buy the most intimate information imaginable about your life and finances, IP law lets them capture the state and use it to shut down any attempts you make to discover how they operate. When an app called Para offered Doordash workers the ability to preview the total wage offered for a job before they accepted it, Doordash threatened them with eye-watering legal penalties, then threw dozens of full-time engineers at them, changing the app several times per day to shut out Para:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/07/hr-4193/#boss-app

And when an Austrian hacker called Mario Zechner built a tool to scrape online grocery store prices – discovering clear evidence of price-fixing conspiracies in the process – he was attacked by the grocery cartel for violating their "IP rights":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/17/how-to-think-about-scraping/

This is Wilhoit's Law in action:

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_M._Wilhoit#Wilhoit's_law

Of course, there wouldn't be any surveillance pricing without surveillance. When it comes to consumer privacy, America is a no-man's land. The last time Congress passed a new consumer privacy law was in 1988, when they enacted the Video Privacy Protection Act, which bans video-store clerks from revealing which VHS cassettes you take home. Congress has not addressed a single consumer privacy threat since Die Hard was still playing in theaters.

Corporate bullies adore a regulatory vacuum. The sleazy data-broker industry that has festered and thrived in the absence of a modern federal consumer privacy law is absolutely shameless. For example, every time an app shows you an ad, your location is revealed to dozens of data-brokers who pretend to be bidding for the right to show you an ad. They store these location data-points and combine them with other data about you, which they sell to anyone with a credit card, including stalkers, corporate spies, foreign governments, and anyone hoping to reprice their offerings on the basis of your desperation:

https://www.404media.co/candy-crush-tinder-myfitnesspal-see-the-thousands-of-apps-hijacked-to-spy-on-your-location/

Under Biden, the outgoing FTC did incredible work to fill this gap, using its authority under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act (which outlaws "unfair and deceptive" practices) to plug some of the worst gaps in consumer privacy law:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/24/gouging-the-all-seeing-eye/#i-spy

And Biden's CFPB promulgated a rule that basically bans data brokers:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/10/getting-things-done/#deliverism

But now the burden of enforcing these rules falls to Trump's FTC, whose new chairman has vowed to end the former FTC's "war on business." What America desperately needs is a new privacy law, one that has a private right of action (so that individuals and activist groups can sue without waiting for a public enforcer to take up their causes) and no "pre-emption" (so that states can pass even stronger privacy laws):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/07/federal-preemption-state-privacy-law-hurts-everyone

How will we get that law? Through a coalition. After all, surveillance pricing is just one of the many horrors that Americans have to put up with thanks to America's privacy law gap. The "privacy first" theory goes like this: if you're worried about social media's impact on teens, or women, or old people, you should start by demanding a privacy law. If you're worried about deepfake porn, you should start by demanding a privacy law. If you're worried about algorithmic discrimination in hiring, lending, or housing, you should start by demanding a privacy law. If you're worried about surveillance pricing, you should start by demanding a privacy law. Privacy law won't entirely solve all these problems, but none of them would be nearly as bad if Congress would just get off its ass and catch up with the privacy threats of the 21st century. What's more, the coalition of everyone who's worried about all the harms that arise from commercial surveillance is so large and powerful that we can get Congress to act:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

Economists, meanwhile, will line up to say that this is all unnecessary. After all, you "sold" your privacy when you clicked "I agree" or walked under a sign warning you that facial recognition was in use in this store. The market has figured out what you value privacy at, and it turns out, that value is nothing. Any kind of privacy law is just a paternalistic incursion on your "freedom to contract" and decide to sell your personal information. It is "market distorting."

In other words, your boss is right.

Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/11/socialism-for-the-wealthy/#rugged-individualism-for-the-poor

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

--

Ser Amantio di Nicolao (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Safeway_supermarket_interior,_Fairfax_County,_Virginia.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[ckret2]

Chapter 74 of that fic about human Bill but he's not in this chapter so forget about him: Ford and Dipper go cryptid hunting!

This is pretty much a standalone chapter so if somehow you stumbled on this without seeing the rest of the fic, u can just, read it by itself as a standalone Dipper and Ford adventure. It's funny. Promise.

####

The camera turned on to reveal Dipper, illuminated sunset orange and cast in heavy shadows, holding the camera out at arm's length. "Welcome back to Dipper's Guide to the Unexplained, anomaly #175: the Fremont Nightwigglers!" He held up a paper title card in his free hand. "I'm Dipper Pines, and today I'm honored to introduce our special guest star—" he turned the camera around to focus on Ford from behind, "—the one and only Dr. Stanford Pines, PhD times twelve—"

Ford laughed self-consciously. "Dipper, nobody's going to recognize my name outside of a few highly specialized academic fields—"

"—the scientist who developed the Theory of Weirdness—"

"That paper isn't even ready for peer review yet, and I can't take all the credit—"

"—and the coolest dimension-hopping monster-fighting mystery-investigating great uncle in the world!"

Ford paused thoughtfully. "Okay, I'll take that one."

"Tonight, we're on the trail of the Fremont Nightwigglers." The recording cut to CCTV footage from a much higher-budget cryptid-hunting show (which Dipper had recorded by aiming the camera at the TV). The footage showed two marshmallow-like creatures that seemed to consist solely of heads, long legs, and feet—smooth, ghostly white, and featureless except for black eyes. They wore denim jeans that covered their bodies from ankles to waists, and their legs seemed to bend jointlessly, like an octopus's arms or an elephant's trunk. "These weird armless creatures have been seen up and down the west coast states, leaving behind a wave of jeans thefts at clothing stores; but by the time local law enforcement has ruled out any human suspects, the true culprits are always long gone."

The recording cut back to Dipper, who'd taken the lead so he could turn around the camera and aim it at both himself and Ford. "Based on investigative research done by Dr. Pines in the 80s, we believe the Nightwigglers have a migratory route several years long that passes through California, Oregon, Washington, and Canada. More research is needed to find out if they travel as far as Alaska or Mexico. Locals believe each Nightwiggler creates an individual burrow around a communal gathering spot to hide in during the day, and at night they assemble in the communal spot to travel or forage in nearby towns."

Ford threw in, "Based on what the townspeople told me about their habits, they've been in Gravity Falls much longer than usual. It typically takes them a week or two to pass through the area, but this year there have been sightings for more than a month. Perhaps we'll find out why."

"And thanks to a hot tip from an in-the-know local"—the recording cut to a few seconds of footage of Wendy proving she could do a handstand on the split-rail fence around the Mystery Shack—"we know which assembly spot they're currently camping around! Tonight, we're trying to get the first deliberate footage of a Nightwiggler..." Dipper lowered the camera and turned toward Ford, "Hey, what'll we call a group of them? A flock? Herd? Meeting? If we're the first investigators to officially document the species, we get to come up with the name , right?"

Ford considered the question. "What about a wobble of Nightwigglers? Since their legs are so... wobbly."

"Sure, that works."

"Is this really your 175th episode?" Ford asked. "I've missed quite a few."

"Ye—well..." Dipper lowered the camera. It recorded his shoes as he walked. "So far I've got a list of 175 anomalies I want to do an episode on, but I've only recorded and posted thirty-something. I think you've seen them all except the two I've done this summer." He sighed. "I'm... kinda disappointed by it, honestly."

"Why? You should be proud of your work so far! You're the only person in the world who's caught footage of the Hide Behind."

"By accident."

"Because you learned how to identify its call, chased it through half the forest, and were prepared with the right equipment to record it. That wasn't luck, Dipper—that was your hard work."

"I guess," Dipper said grudgingly. "I just... wanted to have a lot more produced by now."

"Wh—You started these last June? That's about one every two weeks. That's a very impressive output."

"I made most of them last summer, I hardly did any over the last school year or this summer."

"You've been focusing on your studies, that's good."

"Yeah, but what about this summer? All I've done so far is borrow some of Robbie's music video footage to make an episode about zombies and record some footage I haven't edited yet about Pacifica's alpaca thief. I didn't even get any footage of the haunted doll crane game before it disappeared. Most of the time I've been just... hiding in Soos's room playing Bloodcraft: Overdeath"—(under his breath Ford muttered "Blood-craft over death?")—"or hanging out with Wendy and her friends, or helping Soos with the Mystery Shack, or just trying to avoid..." He trailed off, suddenly conscious of the camera still aimed at the ground. It had started recording footprints drying in the mud after the recent rain: soft indents like the pads of paws, but with no distinct toes, about the size and length of human feet. Dipper lifted the camera to better record the trail they were walking down.

"Well... there's nothing wrong with taking a break during the summer," Ford said. "Especially considering that your last summer was... quite a bit more exciting than most kids'—"

"That's just it!" Dipper said. "Last summer I did so much! I investigated your disappearance, I filled half of your third journal, I helped stop the apocalypse, I wrote a book with Mabel about solving mysteries and doing fun stuff, I recorded like twenty Guides to the Unknown... Compared to that, this summer I feel like I'm—falling behind."

"Falling behind what?"

"I don't know. But—I just—I... feel like..." He trailed off with a frustrated sigh. "I don't know."

Ford offered, "Maybe, like you're not living up to your own potential?"

"Yes! That's it," Dipper said. "I'm not trying to grow up too fast, I'm just worried I'll grow up before I've done all the stuff I'm supposed to do now. Like I'm already running out of time."

"Hmm..." Ford let out a long, thoughtful sigh. "Dipper, I'm probably the wrong person to be giving this advice, considering that I'm not exactly... the paragon of moderation when it comes to pursuing professional ambitions. But—remember that you're only thirteen. Right now, you don't need to be worried about graduating valedictorian and starting up an anomaly-hunting show and doing groundbreaking research into previously-unknown strange and wondrous creatures," Ford said. "You just need to focus on graduating valedictorian first. That's all I did with my high school years, and after that I still managed to rack up multiple PhDs before age 30. You've got plenty of time!" He said this with the confidence of a man who didn't realize having his life derailed by a manipulative alien villain was the only reason he didn't burn out hard by 1984. "Outside of that, just... worry about being a kid."

"Yeah. I guess you're right. Thanks, Grunkle Ford," Dipper said. "I keep worrying, though. I keep thinking, what if I'm wasting all my time on stuff that... just... doesn't matter? What if nothing I'm doing is actually important?"

Ford was silent a moment. "That's... a very existential question for your age. How long have you been worrying—"

Dipper hissed, "Grunkle Ford!" He jerked his camera up. "Is that fire?!" There was a faint orange glow in the distance between the trees.

"I think it is!"

Dipper whispered, "That's where I found the Nightwigglers' abanadoned campsite last time!"

"Did you see any signs that they knew how to start fires? Remains of a campfire?"

"I didn't notice anything."

"It could be a Scampfire..."

As quietly as they could, Dipper and Ford edged through the trees, Dipper all the while pointing the camera toward the light, until they found a narrow gap between two trees from which they could peer into the clearing.

There were three or four dozen Nightwigglers milling about in little clusters. Several had lit torches—sturdy sticks with the ends wrapped in fabric—which they carried by sticking the ends of the torches into their jeans' pockets.

"Dipper, look at the tops of their torches," Ford hissed. "Is that shredded denim?"

The camera zoomed in on the nearest torchbearing Nightwiggler. "I think so."

"We already knew they wore clothing—but they can make tools, too? How advanced are they..."

Ford trailed off as the clustered Nightwigglers separated, spreading out evenly into several rings. As the camera recorded, they began emitting a synchronized muffled humming; and then they began dancing, kicking their legs and turning in circles together. "Whoa," Dipper whispered. "Is this some kind of ritual?"

"What's its purpose?" Ford whispered back. "Recreation? Religion? Some sort of cultural event—?"

"Hold on. I think I recognize the song."

Ford and Dipper fell silent, watching in silence as the dance repeated a couple of times.

The Nightwigglers were doing the Hokey Pokey.

"Fascinating." The camera lurched sideways, and then turned toward Ford. Ford had stolen Dipper's journal from out of his vest pocket and was hastily taking notes on a blank page. "I had no idea Nightwiggler culture was so influenced by human culture. An hour ago, we didn't even know Nightwigglers have a culture. When could they have observed and learned the Hokey Pokey? It's not exactly a nighttime dance—do they spy on humans during the day?"

Dipper said, "What if we learned the dance from Nightwigglers?"

Ford stopped writing, looked up, and stared at Dipper, mind blown.

Dipper jerked the camera back toward the Nightwigglers as they filed out of the clearing. "Hey! Where are they going now?"

Dipper and Ford waited until the last Nightwiggler had left; and then they quietly followed.

####

After several minutes of silence except for the sound of footsteps, Ford said, "Are we headed toward Mabel's Fault?"

Dipper groaned. "I got enough of this place last week."

"Agreed." 

"Hey, you know Bill said we should rename it 'Bill's Fault'?"

Ford huffed. "Did he really? I don't believe it."

"Yeah. He tried to play it off like, 'oOOoh, I just want creEDit—'"

"That sounds like him—"

They came to a stop as the camera spied the Nightwigglers standing in the clearing around the fault, then they quickly moved off the path into the brush and crept closer. "What are they doing?" Dipper asked as they inched up to the tree line.

"I don't know—they're packed too tightly together for me to see."

"I've got an idea. Hold this." The camera bounced as Dipper passed it to Ford, who watched as Dipper climbed up one of the pine trees around the clearing. 

"Careful! There aren't a lot of low branches that can hold your weight."

"It's okay, Wendy showed me how to do this." Dipper held out his hand for the camera.

Ford passed it up to him. "What do you see?"

The camera foused on Mabel's Fault. "The Nightwigglers closest to the fault are taking off their jeans, ripping them into two separate legs, and... tossing them in the fault? Have you ever heard of this?"

"Never."

"Like a dozen have done it so far."

"Perhaps that's why they have to steal so many pairs of pants? But why..."

Dipper gasped. Tiny Nightwigglers had begun squirming out of the fault, each wearing a single denim pant leg, crawling around like inchworms with half the pant leg trailing behind them. The bigger Nightwigglers picked up the little ones with their feet and swaddled them in the excess fabric. "They're—I think they're baby Nightwigglers! Coming out of the fault!"

"Amazing! Is this how they reproduce?" Ford asked. "Is that why they travel the west coast—are they following the San Andreas Fault and the volcanoes in the Pacific Northwest?"

"Maybe that's why they've been in town so long," Dipper said. "Mabel's Fault wasn't here the last time they passed through."

"We'll have to find out what other towns they stay in the longest. How far is Fremont from the fault line—?"

"Hey," Dipper said, "A bunch more Nightwigglers took their jeans off. They're tying them in a circle." One of the torchbearer Nightwigglers knelt down and bowed forward, setting the jeans ring on fire; and it was tossed into the fault. The Nightwigglers that weren't carrying infants formed a circle and began Hokey Pokeying toward the fault.

"That definitely looks like a ritual," Ford said, "but why? To celebrate the births...?"

The ground rumbled. Dipper gasped and slipped several feet down the tree before he caught himself. When he refocused the camera, Mabel's Fault was several feet wider, and a fiery glow was rising up from within.

An enormous Nightwiggler, fifteen feet tall, climbed out of the fault. It wore a crown of flaming denim and tattered pants formed by stitching together many pairs of decades-old jeans. The Nightwigglers bowed down.

"Good lord," Ford breathed. "What is that? Did they summon it, or—or was it always down there?"

The giant Nightwiggler watched regally as its subjects danced around it. As they spun around and completed another repetition of the Hokey Pokey—that's what it's all a-BOUT—the giant punctuated the end of the dance with a ground-shaking stomp.

Dipper lost his grip on the tree. He and the camera crashed to the ground with a yelp. 

"Dipper! Are you alright?!"

"Ow... fine, probably just bruised."

The camera caught Ford kneeling to help Dipper sit up, and then Dipper grabbed the camera again as he stood. He pointed it back at the clearing.

Every single Nightwiggler, babies and giant included, was staring at them with wide black eyes.

Ford said, "Uh oh."

The giant let out a bellow like a muffled hunting horn.

The Nightwigglers charged.

Dipper and Ford ran away through the brush, screaming.

####

Dipper pointed the camera at his face. His hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat and his cheeks and arms were covered in small branch scrapes. "Still works," he reported to Ford.

"Great," Ford said. "That thing's hardy."

The camera jerked as Dipper tried to set it on a tree stump.

"Well, we got away with our lives," he said. "But... not without some losses."

He got the camera settled and backed up. He was wearing his vest zipped up around his hips like a skirt. Ford's trench coat was conspicuously buttoned up, and his legs were bare between his coat and boots. They both looked sheepish.

Ford said, "We've acquired some invaluable anthropological data, though."

"I'm calling this investigation a triumph," Dipper said.

Ford offered a hand. "High six!"

In the background, a skinny-legged Nightwiggler wearing Dipper's shorts darted through the trees.

####

(It's about time Dipper get a little personal attention. Hope you enjoyed and I look forward to hearing y'all's thoughts!)

[unforth]

As I deepen my study with Chinese, the more I'm struck by how word meanings work. The monolingual USAdians I know or encounter online, who studied only as much as needed to get through school, really do seem to think languages are plug and play: know the word in both languages, and swap.

But that couldn't be further from the truth. There's on Chinese word, 稳当 (wĕn dang), that's really struck me for that. Because my flashcards give three translations for 稳当: reliable, secure, and stable. And in English these words are all fairly different! Clearly related but very much do not mean the same thing. How can one Chinese word mean these three different concepts? Well, of course, it doesn't. 稳当 means 稳当, some fusion of those three concepts we have words for in English but not quite any of them, that makes it appropriate to use in places where English would use any of those three. There are surely shades of meaning, and which interpretation of the meaning is most appropriate to a given context will be understood upon reading.

Now, expand this understanding - that a word doesn't mean (exact direct swap in English) but rather the word means the word, and we approximate it to the closest English equivalent we can - to *every single word in every single sentence in an entire book.*

Then translate that book.

Translation is an art, not a science, requiring tremendous verisimilitude in *both* languages, and an understanding of the story, and a deep familiarity with the culture (social, historical, linguistic, etc.) of the original work, and often knowledge of the authors intent (if possible to ascertain), and a range of other skills. Translation will always be interpretive and transformative, because (word in one language) doesn't precisely mean (word in another language). They're not "the same." If I present you a sentence with 稳当 in it, does it mean stable, reliable, or secure? Well that depends. On what? How it's being used, the surrounding context, other factors, and of course... the reader or translators interpretation.

It drives me insane when I see people present alternate translations as some kind of "gotcha" that one translator got things wrong. And don't get me wrong - of course some translations ARE just wrong, obviously if I translate 稳当 to mean "goldfish" I'm not interpreting I'm just incorrect. But beyond obvious mistakes, a world of nuance exists, and different translators can in good faith reach different conclusions on the most appropriate translation. This is WHY famous books not in English get translated repeatedly by different people, and why a reader would want to read multiple translations of the same work - to see, in different translations, some shadow of the wonderful nuance embodied by the original words that do not, and cannot, simply be swapped 1 to 1 for a perfect English translation. And this is *especially* true of a language like Chinese, which is ancient and beautiful and deeply steeped in understandings of Chinese history and literature.

Why do you think I and many others are studying Chinese for years? For me, it's all so I can read the actual books myself and get that much closer to the story, that much closer to my own interpretation. I'll never have the skills of a knowledgeable translator - this isn't my profession, it's my hobby - but I'll gleen things nonetheless and it's important to me to try.

Too many of yall disrespect those skills so much that you'll throw a sentence of a language you know nothing about into Google translate and then declare the translator Wrong (and sometimes Bad and Malicious) based on that.

稳当 means 稳当. It doesn't mean "reliable." It doesn't mean "the exact translation of 稳" plus "the exact translation of 当". It's a Chinese word with a Chinese definition that we retrofit English on to.

And the hardest part? Look, I'm still a Chinese novice. For all I fucking know, 稳当 actually MIGHT have three distinct definitions. Everything I said about it above might be wrong. I don't know enough Chinese yet to know for sure, and that's a level of nuance and understanding I'll only reach by reading more.

Multiply that by *every single word in both the original language and the language it's being translated into.*

That's what translation is.

Good luck.

[fans4wga]

'Why creatives are seeking residuals' - thread by Stefanie Williams

[Tweet thread by Stefanie Williams @/StefWilliams25

TRANSCRIPT:

Why creatives are seeking residuals vs. "do you pay the mattress maker every time you sleep on a mattress?" A thread. I keep hearing over and over again that writers/actors/creatives don't deserve residuals for the work they create. "If I build a bathroom in a house, I don't get paid every time someone uses the toilet."

TRUE! However, your bathroom build has a set market value. Art does not. No one knows what makes one TV show an overnight success, and another a flop. No one knows what makes one song a hit, and the other a dud. If they did, trust me when I say record companies would be churning out Taylor Swifts over and over again. Studios would be making nothing but Stranger Things.

But that isn't the case. No one could predict Stranger Things would be a massive, billion dollar hit. No one could predict Taylor Swift was going to be a world wide phenomenon who literally could record herself reading Aesop's Fables and make millions of dollars. Which is why residuals are important. The pay structure protects both the creators and the publishers/distributors.

The easiest way to explain it is by referencing an author writing a book. Sure, an author might get a very modest up front fee, but the author is banking on royalties to really make money on the book — for every book sold, the author gets a piece of the pie. This protects both the author and the publisher—because if the book is a flop, the publisher doesn't go broke on a financial promise they made to the author that didn't pan out, and if the book is a mega-hit, the author didn't give away a massive, million-dollar book for 20k.

It's a sliding scale that is required for a product that has no set market value. What makes an actor's work on a hit show more valuable than an actor's work on a show that gets canned after five episodes? The market value for art almost always comes after the fact, so residuals account for that reality. They make sure the creator get compensated at a fair market rate. A person who builds a bathroom knows, upfront, what the market rate for a bathroom is. That bathroom won't suddenly be worth 1000 times more than you built it for in six months. It doesn't have the potential to be built for 20k and generate 20 million.

Residuals are a pay structure that simply account for an unsure market value. Trust me, we all wish we could quantify art in terms of dollars. But art is unpredictable. So studios and streamers -- which literally REQUIRE content to stay viable -- have to account for that unpredictability. And for studios (or record labels, or book publishers) it's always trial and error. The only way to get a hit, is to go through a few flops.

For every Whitney Houston, there was a singer you never heard of. For every Sopranos, there was a show that got scrapped mid season. For every Titanic, there was a movie that bombed. For every Twilight, there was a book about vampires that went nowhere. Residuals are kind of a reverse market valuation. They pay a fair wage for a product than can only have a set value once it's been created and effectively consumed.

And even then, shit changes. Anyone think Kate Bush would spend weeks on the top of the charts in 2022? Residuals account for unpredictable markets. And in order to have accurate residuals, streamers and studios need to be transparent and open about their data, which is one of the MANY things the WGA and SAG are both fighting for.

[punkitt-is-here]

Hey, a little while ago you reblogged a post which says "If you believe a group of trans people has systemic privilege over another group of trans people, you are transphobic." This isn't a callout post or anything so trite, but I think I really respect you as a person, and so I wanted to ask you to think a little more carefully about that statement:

Does a white trans person really not have systemic privilege over a black trans person? Does a neurotypical trans person not have systemic privilege over a neurodivergent trans person? Does a trans man not have systemic privilege over a trans woman? Do you need to be transphobic to believe that?

Agh, I don't really know why I'm sending this. It just feels like the trans community writ large has been regressing pitifully in its understanding of intersecting axes of oppression, and it's really miserable to see that and not know what to do about it.

Sorry to bother you with this, I hope you have a lovely day.

i think i remember your message from a bit back! meant to get to that, but forgot to. i dont got the post on me, but it seems clear to me from what i remember that it was talking exclusively about gender when it was talking about one trans person having systemic privilege over the other. I think many of us already know that a white person is going to have far more systemic privilege than a non-white peer, and that neurotypical people have more systemic privilege over neurodivergent people. this is true whether or not they are trans. I think the post assumed in good faith that we can intuit this and the post doesn't need a million disclaimers for every power imbalance out there.

And I will say, I don't believe a trans man has systemic privilege over a trans woman, thats the whole posts point! Maybe some do, but I'm sure there's an equal number of people in the reverse situation. Disregarding the idea that becoming a man automatically gives you the same privileges as a cis one, there is an extremely wide, near-infinite spectrum of how gender presentation and gender identity intersect, and acting like all trans people of a certain gender have privilege over another IS transphobic. The posts point, from what i recall, is that its shitty to create little microgroups and assume others are your enemy in a privilege pyramid, because we are all trans and therefore we all need to lift each other up.

I'm not really gonna think on it more because I don't have the post but disregarding the systemic privileges that are factored in aside from being trans is fine because I dont think every post needs to cover every alternative point in the entire world because sometimes when you're making a post you just hope people will intuit the obvious. otherwise, nothing concise would ever exist.

[once-in-a-blue-moon-rising]

Seen a few 'maturity is realising that it's not a look of love' videos on Instagram re: 457, and while I do realise it is Not That Deep, I nonetheless have THOUGHTS

The crux of those thoughts is this: has fandom's view of shipping narrowed so far that unless two characters are mashing their faces together on-screen, it's immature to interpret the text contrary to what we assume the creator's intention was?

With this ship specifically, let's start with the obvious: the actors have insane chemistry. This is true whether you see the characters' bond as platonic, romantic, antagonistic, or something else. They are very obviously comfortable and friendly with one another in real life, and this translates into an intense on-screen relationship between Gi-hun and In-ho (and I'm sure this is exactly what the director did want, because, newsflash, this is our protagonist/antagonist duo).

I do think it's valid to ship something based purely off the actors' chemistry, but the comment is obviously referring to the characters themselves in the context of the story, so let's address that too.

There's a clear motivation for the way In-ho stares at Gi-hun, follows him around, and generally tries to insert himself into his life, and this is what these posts are referring to. He's testing his ideology, he's watching how he's affected by the horrific things that are happening around him, and to help him do this, he's ensuring that Gi-hun trusts and likes him. It's important if he wants to prove to him that the world is unchangeable, and humanity irredeemable.

And because of that, it's not the 'look of love'. Case closed?

Well, no.

Because there is so much nuance and depth that you're failing to explore, if a look can only mean one thing.

Because why does In-ho bother? Why is Gi-hun worth his time and interest? In-ho - via the games - has access to resources that far far outweigh the money Gi-hun won. He could prevent him from finding the island forever. He could just have him shot tbh. He's not really a credible threat - at most, he's a minor annoyance, because people need to be paid off every so often to prevent him getting too close.

Just through this detail, we can deduce that In-ho cares, in some way. He is interested enough to want to change Gi-hun's mind, when it would be so much easier to... not. Is it love? It's certainly fascination. And I don't think it can be argued that he brought him back for the VIPs' entertainment and not his own, because Gi-hun was searching for three years before In-ho let himself be found. And even when he's found, it's Gi-hun who suggests going back into the games.

So these stares - yes, he's testing him, but he's doing it because he wants to. They denote genuine interest. How did this guy retain his hope and faith in humanity? How can I prove to him that my view is correct?

And I'm very much not saying that a romantic interpretation is 'correct', because fiction should be interpreted however the audience sees fit, but what is love (in all its forms) if not wanting to know someone and be known by them?

This is even more compelling to me when we take into account In-ho's backstory, which we learn a bit more about in season 2. Because he and Gi-hun are so similar, except in the way they've used their trauma to interpret the world. Which just adds to the evidence that In-ho would be fascinated by this man, be determined to know him and to change his mind.

What I'm saying with all this isn't that 457 is canon, and that anyone who says otherwise is media illiterate. What I'm saying is that the real immature interpretation is one that's surface level, be that interpretation 'uwu he loves him' or 'he's PLOTTING evil things'.

[dunmeshistash]

So I'm just gonna ramble for a while cause I was thinking about it while editing the 5 key words post for Izutsumi, so beware this isn't really well structured and more of a stream of consciousness

You know how some monsters in dungeon meshi are just "big" versions of a normal animal? Like the Big Bat and the Huge Scorpion, both of them have the same "大" kanji in from of their names that translates to big/huge. Huge Scorpion (大サソリ) Big Bat (大蝙蝠) and that is also used for the monster that is part of Izutsumi (大猫), But Yen press translated it as "greater cat" which to me gives it a different impression?

The notes at the end of the EHScans version says the Oneko is based on a creature from japanese folklore of the same name but I'm not sure if it's really inspired on it after trying to read up the wiki page with google translate, or if it's just meant to be a literal big cat

Either way! These creatures kinda blur even more the definition of whats even a monster I think, cause other than being big they don't have that much going on? Dire wolves and Wargs too, other than being bigger than "normal" animals they're just animals

Which raises more questions about what counts as a monster in that world, the glossary says in general monsters are "creatures that need mana (magic energy) in order to be active" and it's a very vague definition

So it makes me wonder, since the 'Big Cat' fused with Izutsumi (that to me looks like a normal panther/generic big cat) is already a monster would a normal irl tiger in dunmeshi world be a monster too? Are weretigers and werebears just fused to (what we would consider) normal tigers and bears?

But there's the aspect that "normal animals" aren't that aggressive to humans, which is true irl, they're just living their lives even if they can harm humans, so maybe the influence of magic in the monsters that makes them attack humans? Or perhaps is something that only happens inside dungeons and that people assume it's true outside of them too? (Like how we assume predators are aggressive irl tbh)

Although even inside the dungeon that's doubtful, they ARE there to protect the dungeon following the wishes of the Dungeon Lord (we can assume) but like, the living armors were just chilling unless people approached them and the Bicorn doesn't want to fight Laios party at all and even flees

Isn't THAT just an animal? (Although the bicorn does have magical abilities but humans can use magic too, are humans monsters?)

Anyway I'm not trying to make any points, much to think about.

[bangtanhoesthings]

Long ask.

Forgive me, this will be all over the place.

I have noticed that over the past few years the hate for the boys has been escalating particularly for Jimin, Jungkook and Joonie.

For Joonie, among other things, because as a leader, if they break him, they might break BTS. (Gosh look at him😭. Has me my man, my man, my man-ning all over the place like a dog in heat, it's embarrassing and a little concerning). Sorry, I digressed but look at him 😭😭😭, y'all don't thirst over this man enough. Woof! 🫦

Anyways, moving on.

For Jungkook, among a plethora of other reasons, because of the unrivaled, unmitigated global success he has had and continues to have (am so proud of my funky lil popstar ✨).

He came, he saw, he conquered. Kicked ass and took names. Ate and left no crumbs. Had them by the neck. Pulled up and shut it down (Somebody stop me 😭)

The way some army attribute his success to the 🛴 guy boils my blood, and that rage is for another day.

This post is towards Jimin.

Jimin's hate is both from outside and inside the fandom ( am not talking about solos, toxic shippers, mantis and the like) but people who claim to be 0T7.

I know that Jimin has had haters for years but the shady tweets I saw during the FACE and MUSE era from so called "ARMY" said a lot. Am not here to debate who is or isn't ARMY. That's for another time.

My question is, why does Jimin's success seem to be a sore spot for some 0T7s? The one reason I have been able to come up with is that Jimin sort of messed up the hierarchy system.

Let me explain and see if I make sense. For a long time, when people thought of the maknae line, no matter the order in which they ranked Tae and Kookie, Jimin was always the third one. Too many posts relegating him to the role of cheerleader and not much else. I saw posts before solo works commenced dismissing the idea that Jimin would ever release an album but would instead fully support the others. Well, he not only released two solo albums, but was also a composer, lyricist among other things, so they can take their opinion and smoke it.

When the solo era started, people had different expectations for what every maknae members would achieve but no matter the expectations, those for Jimin were that he would be third. Bronze medalist if you will.

FACE was released, Like Crazy got to number 1 and I logged off twitter. We were in hell particularly when it went from 1 to 45 after Billboard deleted over 100k sales and changed the rules (thank you Travis Scott for freeing Jimin and finally taking that number 1 spot). The hate from outside was expected, it was when it came from within the fandom that it hurt.

Fast forward to MUSE and it got worse. Sprinkle in a dash of Are You Sure and we have

Here I have a list of things I have noticed

1. An increase in the number of people talking about how they hate PJMs and how they are making them turn against Jimin. Honey, if a solo can make you dislike one member, you aren't sh*t anyway.

2. Dislike for Jimin disguised as dislike for his solos. If you haven't seen it, consider yourself lucky.

3. How sometimes ARMY came in droves when a member didn't achieve something but Jimin did. For example Spotify US. When a new song failed to enter but Jimin's songs increased ( during both LC and Who era).

4. His long run on the hot 100 has really revealed people's true colours. It's not his fault. Blame the fandom for their clear bias.

5. The number of ARMY accounts on X low key calling AYS fanservice.

6. Discourse on Jimin's ability to sing. I don't argue with stupid people.

I could go on and on but what I am trying to say is that in a perfect world, it would be wonderful if all the members had the same support from ARMY. The discrepancy needs to be addressed (caused by a multitude of reasons) but making it a member's fault and not the fandom is asinine.

I used to be a 1D fan and my favourite member to date is the least favourite and successful, Louis Tomlinson but that doesn't mean I hate on Harry, Zayn or Niall for their success. I wouldn't even know where to begin.

What prompted this you may ask? I saw a post talking about Jimin being the company and fandom fave and having special support. Like huh?

All in all what I am trying to say is that Jimin really shook things up and some people resent him for it. That one post (article?) about Jimin bringing out either admiration or envy keeps getting proven right.

Keep supporting this angel for a long and happy life.

What do you think are some other reasons for the increase in the 0T6 agenda against Jimin?

[battymommastuff]

The One I was Meant to Find

Batmom x Batman, Batmom x Batfamily

Prompt: While digging through the attic, Dick Grayson and Jason Todd uncover a secret about their adoptive mother. A secret that reveals the true, and dark story of the most loved couple in Gotham City

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Masterlist

!!DISCLAIMER!! - This likely won't be comic accurate (Obviously), but I did draw inspiration from the comics. If you are looking for something accurate, then this fanfic isn't for you.

You can swallow fire, you've practically flown through the hair....You've performed in front of millions from age eighteen. You felt like you could handle anything the world threw at you....

Until you entered the Upper district of Gotham City a week after being taken in by Bruce Wayne. The part of the city full of the most lavish, and expensive stores. So many name brands that you only ever dreamed of wearing. Not even Haly himself could afford such luxuries, and he owned the circus. Bruce insisted that he bring you to this part of the city to shop for your new wardrobe. He planned on buying outfits, dresses, shoes, jewelry, perfumes, and anything else you could never need. You tried to convince him to just take you to a thrift shop or some random outlet, but he only looked at you as if you spat on his shoes. 

So here you were, standing in front of a store that you had no business being in. Little did you know, you would be walking into these stores as if you were walking through your home in the future. All in due time...

Bruce enjoyed a cheap glass of champagne while you were given dress after dress to wear. Since your method of employment was no longer safe, he planned on hiring you as his assistant until you were safe to find your own career path. You stepped out in a dark blue dress that fit a little big on you, "Bruce, you really don't have to do this...I mean a thousand dollars for a dress? I'm sure we can find something similar for a cheaper price." You said while holding the price tag. He frowned, standing up from his seat. He walked over to you and inspected the price tag for himself. 

He turned you around so you were facing the mirror, "I think it looks wonderful on you." Bruce said with a smile. He moved your hair to the side so he could zip up the rest of the dress and rested his hand on your hip. You both decided to put off the facade of being a couple while in public. Subtle touches like this were going to happen, but he didn't go too far with it, "I could buy this entire store if I wanted to." He whispered into your ear. A shiver went down your spine, and you bit your lip softly. You knew Bruce Wayne was rich, but just how rich was he? Obviously he was rich enough to keep up his lifestyle as Batman. You turned around, not realizing just how close the two of you were. 

Have you ever had that feeling? That feeling that you were looking at someone you knew? As if you'd been with them a thousand life times. That's what you felt when you looked into his eyes. It was as if your souls found each other once again. You knew the theory of the multiverse from one of the clowns in the circus, he loved conspiracy. The thought of you and Bruce being together in different universes made you giggle a bit, "What's so funny?" He asked, his hand still resting on your waist. 

"Nothing at all, Mr. Wayne." Bruce rolled his eyes then back away from you. You only called him that to be a tease. You two often found yourselves teasing one another. Which is why Alfred was very happy to have the both of you out of the house...so he can be free of the thick tension for a few hours. Now you were walking downstairs to the batcave, dressed in one of your new nightgowns. Tonight was one of those nights where you felt unsafe. Truly, you never felt safe. You knew there were eyes on you outside of Wayne Manor. The only place you felt safe was right by Bruce's side...or Batman's at this time of night. 

"You should be asleep." Batman said as he typed away on the batcomputer. It made you think of the night he rescued you, "You have a busy day tomorrow, and I'm sure your boss wouldn't be happy with you being tardy." He joked then turned to look at you. He could tell instantly that you were scared. He understood the fear. After his parents were murdered, he would be up all night in fear of their murderer coming back to finish him off. Living life having to constantly look over your shoulder was no life to live. Without a word, he stood up while removing his cape. The surprisingly light material was draped over your shoulders to keep you warm. He wasn't going to make you leave. If you felt safe around him, then you could stay. Still in silence, you sat down on a stool next to a table lined with gadgets. You hadn't the faintest clue of what any of them were, but they looked very dangerous. 

Was it strange? That you could picture your life like this? By his side, helping him on his quest for Justice. The Manor already felt like home. More so than the circus ever did. That feeling came back again. The one where you felt as if you've been through this before. As if every choice you've ever made led to this very moment. Led you to Bruce. 

"Do you believe in soulmates?" 

"No." 

Your mouth formed an O shape and you awkwardly nodded. That might have been a question for Bruce Wayne not Batman. You learned quickly that the two were vastly different people. Bruce almost felt like the mask while Batman was truly who he was. Sometimes you saw a mix of the two...which you favored. 

"Y/N. I'm not someone you can love. My life and what I do will only bring you more danger, you will never live the happy life you deserve to live. I can never make you happy, and can never give myself to you fully. I'm sorry." 

Being rejected before the first move was ever made never felt good. You felt your heart shatter at the same time that your eyes began to water, "R-Right...I was dumb to ever think otherwise." You said while sliding down from the stool, "Goodnight...Batman." You whispered and swiftly left the batcave, passing Alfred who instantly noticed the tears falling from your eyes.  He could only shake his head as he made his way down the stone steps. 

"Lying to yourself and to her will only make it worse, Master Wayne." Alfred said as he set down a fresh cup of tea next to Batman. Nothing was ever openly spoken, but it was obvious that Bruce and Batman both had feelings for you. Everything about you just drove him insane. He never believed in soulmates until he met you. He never thought that there could be anyone in this world made for him. Yet there you were, and it terrified him. How could he ever keep you safe? Once his enemies knew of you, you were going to be the target. The Court was already going after you, but he had so many more that would love to watch him hurt. He knew if he let himself care for you, it would only end with him losing you. 

And he couldn't lose you....

TAGLIST

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